Dhaka fell on 16th December 1971 after a hard fought war, which resulted in a decisive victory for us. Over 90,000 soldiers were taken prisoners of war. We had taken over land. It was a victory any way you slice it. Any negotiations, which happened after that, should have favored us greatly. After all we were holding all the cards. We should have been able to dictate the terms and negotiate from a position of disproportionate strength. Did any of that happen? Sadly not. Our warriors won the war. Our gullible leaders lost the negotiations. Karl Von Clausewitz, who is considered to be the foremost warrior-philosopher said: "If the enemy is to be coerced, you must put him in a situation that is even more unpleasant than the sacrifice you call on him to make. The hardships of the situation must not be merely transient - at least not in appearance. Otherwise, the enemy would not give in, but would wait for things to improve."
In other words, you make things so bad for the enemy that they gladly accept your terms. Not us. We believe in singing “mere dushman, mere bhai”. When we were expected to twist the knife in the chest of our enemy to finish him once and for all, we gave him a lifeline and earned an enemy for the rest of our lives and the lives of forthcoming generations. If memory serves correctly, Victor Davis Hanson said (and I paraphrase)that in case of a fight between two unequal enemies, the weaker has to accept total defeat otherwise there can never be peace. That is what we have between India and Pakistan.
When Bhutto and his massive entourage came to Simla to negotiate, he came with his own sob stories to get sympathy from us. There are stories after stories but only one end result, which is there for all to see. People say that he came to negotiate with an open mind. Of course that was all a lie. The man was a Pakistani, an artist in “Al Taqiyya”. He outwitted the entire Indian delegation. Here is what Mr. J N Dixit says” People often ask why did we give back the territory we won? Holding foreign territory is expensive militarily. It would also have not been acceptable to the international community. The 93,000 POWs lived in pucca housing. Our troops guarding them lived in tents. For a year they lived in tents. Under the Geneva Convention you have to give certain facilities to POWs. It affected the morale of our soldiers. They thought we defeated the Pakistanis, but they are living comfortably while we are in slums. There was the tension of keeping 93,000 hostile soldiers. It was a complex predicament and we wanted to get rid of them.
Holding a foreign territory is expensive? I wonder what Mr. Dixit thinks of the expenditure incurred in dealing with the J&K insurgency in the last twenty year. Of course while we were worried to death about the sanctity of the Geneva Convention, and released all of the Pakistani POW’s without anything in return, they held on to 54 or our soldiers who were never released. Bhutto came to Simla. Told us that his life would be in danger if he did not get the kind of concessions, which the Pakistani army needed. We took pity on him. He promised us all kinds of things we wanted to believe. We took his word on its face value. Our naivety let the Pakistanis bluff there way out of Simla. We should have held on to the land and the POW’s until we got what we wanted. We could have demanded the prosecution of all the war criminals in Pakistan who killed millions of Bangladeshis. Instead we believed them and frittered away the hard earned advantage. Bhutto went back and in a few short years started the Pakistani nuclear program, which is haunting us to date. Who should we blame for blowing the huge advantage? We are the ones who elected Indira Gandhi because she had the right pedigree rather than ability. In the end, it is always the voter who is responsible.
The J N Dixit article can be read at: http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/jul/15spec.htm An article to give you a heartburn: http://www.hinduonnet.com/2000/02/06/stories/1306067g.htm The article that started this series: http://www.indiandefencereview.com/2010/07/seven-blunders-that-will-haunt-india-for-posterity.html
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